Italeri TF-104G Marineflieger - final struggle

[Lothar]

I'm quite curious to hear about your experience with AK. I'm about to order some, as they have ADC gray

in their range which I'll need some in the future.

Lothar

[Fanes]

20 minutes ago, mozart said:

"Meh" for AK gloss varnish Joachim......tell us more!  I'm experimenting with Kcolor Metallic natural metal, it's easy to use and quite shiny on my test plane but I need to do a bit more testing with under surface prep etc.

Well, I'm simply underwhelmed. my favourite gloss coat so far: Tamiya X-22 with levelling thinner - smelly as hell but extremly smooth and durable.

What was I looking for with the AK product: quick drying and less smell. That's easy but somehow I needed a rather thick coat to get a halfway decent finish.

Even though I used flow improver to break the surface tension the varnish came down like the first rain on a freshly waxed car..

To make it worse: it isn't really glossy more like a semi gloss (compared to Tamya clear).

 

2 minutes ago, Lothar said:

I'm quite curious to hear about your experience with AK. I'm about to order some, as they have ADC gray

in their range which I'll need some in the future.

Lothar

I have their ADC grey, too (for the radome). As it's from their lacquer colour range it'll be okayish - I hope. For the cockpit I used the AK dark gull gray which wasn't as good as MRP but not bad either.

 

[Fanes]

Decal time

To be honest - I'm not a huge fan of decalling but I won't get around them this time.

First of a very unpleasant start:

applying the eduard decals to the MB ejection seat. The decals are quite thick and it took a lot of patience and decal softener to get them to conform to the surface.

Especially all those decals which had to go around somethin instead of simply being placed onto the surface.

 

Damn macro - I have to do some clean up on the cushion

 

I couldn't motivate myself to do the second seat (why am I building a two seater?) so I switched to the instrument panel.

To my surprise the wonderful instrument dials from Airscale were to large for the Italeri IP.

 

You may see that the machmeter on the rear IP (lying in the front; confusing - I know) is slightly too big. Unfortunately the dials on the front IP (lying behind) are even smaller!

What were they thinking??

Anyway I made some progress with the rear IP. Thanks to my punch-and-die I could decrease the decals outer diameter.

 

Unfortunately this won't help with the front IP.

I immediately ordered an 1/48 set from Airscale. Any other ideas on how to deal with this issue?

[mozart]

What an absolute pain Joachim......the seat looks pretty damn good though! 

[dmthamade]

Too bad about the gauges. I have to confess, i'm terrible with pits. When I did a JASDF Zip I used console and instrument panels fro Eduard. kinda cheating, but far better than anything I could ever do,

Edited May 7, 2020 by dmthamade

[Fanes]

7 hours ago, dmthamade said:

Too bad about the gauges. I have to confess, i'm terrible with pits. When I did a JASDF Zip I used console and instrument panels fro Eduard. kinda cheating, but far better than anything I could ever do,

But it's a fantastitc result. Maybe it would be smart to combine the eduard PE with the knobs and switches from Anyz?

Or go completely crazy and build two new IPs with Airscale PE bezels??
Don't make me start over again

Edited May 8, 2020 by Fanes

[dmthamade]

5 hours ago, Fanes said:

But it's a fantastitc result. Maybe it would be smart to combine the eduard PE with the knobs and switches from Anyz?

Or go completely crazy and build two new IPs with Airscale PE bezels??
Don't make me start over again

 

The Eduard panels are one dimensional, and they do come with PE switches and levers. I did try to use them, but after they pinged off, never to be found, I skipped these parts. After all that, I closed the canopy anyways, personal preference as the F-104 looks so sleek closed up.

https://www.eduard.com/eduard/photo-etched-parts/tf-104g-interior-w-mb-seats-1-32.html?cur=2

 

Eduard also has LOOK panels, resin and 3 dimensional. Nothing for modern aircraft, limited to WW2 stuff.

https://www.eduard.com/eduard/me-262a-löök-1-32.html?cur=2&listtype=search&searchparam=look

 

Combining the panel with Anyz stuff, sounds like a great idea. Using PE bezels etc to build your own panels sounds great as well, though I wouldn't be able to do this.

 

Don

[red Dog]

You're doing Great work on thet zipper Joachim,

Love it

[Fanes]

Only a small update today.

The secon seat recieved its decals. THis time I went with a hotter decal solution (Mr. Mark softer insted of Micro sol) and it definitely helped to get everything in place.

It lloks just like the other one, so a photo seems unnecessary to me.

I turned my attention to the side consoles and aded the Anyz decals. Oh boy that was a hard fight.

You have to get them centered to the 0.5mm hole - easy peasy if the surface is flat. Well the side consoles aren't..

 

They aren't as perfect as Pete's work on the pave hawk but good enough for my first try.

Decalling isn't over but I have to wait until the new Airscale instrument decals arrive. I ordered them thursday and they are already in the mail.

Those brits are fast!

I started working on the electronic bays. It was mostly removing plastic for the eduard PE. I thought I could rush trough but there are loads of cables which need to be added.

I started losing my mojo. So I stopped (no photos yet) and went on to work on some plastic. I never thought that filling and sanding seams on drop tanks could be therapeutic

 

[mozart]

I can understand the mojo thing completely Joachim, I'm stuck on my Lightning cockpit at the moment but need to "push through it".  What is it about detailing cockpits? 

[Fanes]

1 hour ago, mozart said:

I can understand the mojo thing completely Joachim, I'm stuck on my Lightning cockpit at the moment but need to "push through it".  What is it about detailing cockpits? 

That's a good question Max. I coulask as well: What is about detailing wheel wells?

Is it something we do beacause everyone does it?

[Fanes]

Electronic and computer bays - the madness continues

I have no idea why I started detailing the electronic bay - maybe because Italeri's attempt was so poor.

Here's the result after hours of wiring to the kit part on the left and the original.

The cover on the left will get a PE cover (coverception?) from eduard, so there's no need to clean it up.

 

Work on the inside of the bay door has started (removing pin marks). Unfortunately there is no piano hinge on the kit part. I'll crawl through my spare parts box. I have an itch that there might be a PE hinge from an armour build years ago..

Until then I went over to the computer bay aft of the cockpit. I removed all detail from the boxes to prepare for the eduard PE.

I did a quick colour check and as I feared the printed colours are a litle of. The greenish tone doesn't match YZC (Tamiya XF-4) and interior green GZC (Mr. Color). Since it should be YZC I'll have to repaint the PE and somehow mask the placards (FUN!!!). The computer boxes should be dark gull grey (FS326231), somehow eduard matched them perfectly to FS36230. Lucky me that I have a jar of that colour from Gunze in my stash.

 

You may ask: can he go futher with his craziness? - yes, I can!

If you look closely, you may notice the holes I drilled into the PE parts to acommodate the wiring. i may have snapped on, two, or three 0.25mm drill bits

Onto the next part - the front hatch.

I made a start in detailing the inside, added copper wire for the cables and made an attempt for the spindle thingy up top (brass tube and steel wire)

 

The inside of the rear hatch is a story for another day.

A little teaser: rivets, missing boxes and an ID light

 

[Lee White]

6 hours ago, Fanes said:

Electronic and computer bays - the madness continues

I have no idea why I started detailing the electronic bay - maybe because Italeri's attempt was so poor.

Here's the result after hours of wiring to the kit part on the left and the original.

The cover on the left will get a PE cover (coverception?) from eduard, so there's no need to clean it up.

 

Work on the inside of the bay door has started (removing pin marks). Unfortunately there is no piano hinge on the kit part. I'll crawl through my spare parts box. I have an itch that there might be a PE hinge from an armour build years ago..

Until then I went over to the computer bay aft of the cockpit. I removed all detail from the boxes to prepare for the eduard PE.

I did a quick colour check and as I feared the printed colours are a litle of. The greenish tone doesn't match YZC (Tamiya XF-4) and interior green GZC (Mr. Color). Since it should be YZC I'll have to repaint the PE and somehow mask the placards (FUN!!!). The computer boxes should be dark gull grey (FS326231), somehow eduard matched them perfectly to FS36230. Lucky me that I have a jar of that colour from Gunze in my stash.

 

You may ask: can he go futher with his craziness? - yes, I can!

If you look closely, you may notice the holes I drilled into the PE parts to acommodate the wiring. i may have snapped on, two, or three 0.25mm drill bits

Onto the next part - the front hatch.

I made a start in detailing the inside, added copper wire for the cables and made an attempt for the spindle thingy up top (brass tube and steel wire)

 

The inside of the rear hatch is a story for another day.

A little teaser: rivets, missing boxes and an ID light

 

To paraphrase the old Crazy Eddie commercial, "(That detailing) is INSANE!!!!".

[mozart]

Absolutely bonkers Joachim! 

[Fanes]

18 hours ago, Lee White said:

To paraphrase the old Crazy Eddie commercial, "(That detailing) is INSANE!!!!".

 

9 hours ago, mozart said:

Absolutely bonkers Joachim!

Thank you very much Lee and Max. I'm doing my best to stay borderline sane while trying to keep up with all those incredible buils here on LSP.